Alternate Realities (10 page)

They broke. Griffin looked toward me. I ran away, but I waited in the crosspassage outside until I knew Griffin had believed my lie and was gone from there, sweaty as he was, carrying his shirt over his arm and headed for the lift.

Lance came, later. He didn’t see me. I stayed to the shadows and watched him pass, walking with shoulders bowed, showered and cleaned and bearing no mark on him.

I could have bit my tongue for the lie I’d chosen, that Dela had had need of Griffin—and not of him.

At least I had stopped it. That much. What was more, it worked—at least for Dela, who got Griffin back; and for Griffin, who at least found himself welcome. No more of them that afternoon, no more intrusions on the crew, no more of Griffin’s frettings.

Lance ... helped Viv and Percy set up the lab, unnaturally patient.

That evening—evening, as we had declared the time to be—my lady decided to throw a private party—a party in Hell, she declared it, with that terrible born-man humor of hers; and we had to serve the dinner and serve as guests as well ... to fill up the table.

Griffin fell in with this humor in reluctant grace, and dressed. It was Lance who had to attend him, Lance that Dela appointed his servant. Better me, oh, better me; but that was how it was. I dressed my lady Dela in her best, a beautiful blue gown, and did her hair, and fixed the dinner, and in betweentimes I saw to myself, and to Viv and to the crew.

The crew, for their part, was not enthusiastic. They were still on their duty fix.

“They’re to enjoy themselves,” was Dela’s order, which I relayed. It was a kind of absolution, and that wrought a little change (at least I imagined one) in Lynn and Wayne and Percy, once they did off their plain duty clothes and changed into their best.

Vivien now preened and became her chignoned, elegant self again, fit for the halls at Brahmani Dali. It’s not precisely so that Vivien couldn’t love: she adored her own handsomeness. “Bring me my gown,” it was; and “Careful with that,” as if she were Dela. As if her clinging to me and Lance during the catastrophe embarrassed her now, so she put more feeling than usual into giving orders, and took more fussing-over than all the rest of us put together.

No fussing at all for Modred. He stayed himself, and came in black, like what he wore on duty. My lady said in seeing him that it matched his soul—but that was figurative, I took it, souls being a born-man attribute.

Griffin came; and Lance—Griffin in blue and Lance in darker blue, a color almost as grim as Modred’s. We saw Griffin and Dela seated and served the wine, and hurried below to bring up the feast, Lance and I; and Percy, who was not too proud to help—smiling and chattering with easy cheerfulness. Lance put on a smile, if you didn’t look at the eyes—and Percivale used the wit in that handsome skull of his and chattered blithely away while we arranged things, with a tact I think he learned on his own. Certainly his duties never included filling awkward silences.

I squeezed Percy’s arm when we passed the door, a thank you, and Percy pursed his lips and put on a blankness that would have done Modred credit. He knew—at least he reasoned that there was trouble; Percivale was good at thinking, duty fix or no.

We came topside, into that huge formal dining room with the weapons and the real wooden beams and the flickering lights like live flame. All of them who had sat down at table got up again to help serve, excepting Griffin and Dela of course, who sat together at the head of the table. It was a scandalous profusion of food, when we were only then setting up the lab that was, at best, never going to give us delicacies such as this: but Dela was never one to scant herself while the commodity held out—be it lovers or wines or the food we had to live on. Maybe it pleased her vanity to feed her servants so extravagantly; she had brought us to appreciate such things—even Modred was not immune to such pleasures. Perhaps it was humor. Or perhaps it was something more complicated, like flinging her money about like a challenge—even here. Here—because Griffin was here to be impressed.

“Sit, sit down,” Dela bade us with a grand wave of her hand, and we did. She had saved Lance the place at her left hand, and me the one at Griffin’s right; and then came Gawain and Lynette, Percivale at the end; Vivien and Modred next to Lance. We ate, serving ourselves further helpings. Dela chattered away quite gaily—so beautiful she was, with her pale braids done up beside her face, and her gown cut low to show off her fine fair complexion; and Griffin, blond and handsome beside her ... they talked of times they had had in the mountains near Brahmani Dali, and of what a bizarre occurrence this was, and how Griffin thought she took it all marvelously well and was very brave.

Nonsense, I thought. Neither one of them was taking it that calmly:
we
saw.

“I have good company,” she said. And she patted Griffin’s hand on the tabletop and patted Lance’s, and I swallowed hard at my wine, having about as much as I could stomach. I unfocused my eyes and looked at the plate. I knew that I ought not to look on Lance’s face just then; I gave him that grace.

“Lancelot, and I,” Griffin said, “passed time in the gym today. We should meet again tomorrow. It’s been a long time since I found a match my size.”

“Sir,” Lance murmured.

“Not sir,” Griffin said. “Not down there. You don’t hold back. You really fight. I like that.”

“Yes, sir,” Lance whispered back.

“Be there tomorrow,” Griffin said, “same time.”

“Yes, sir,” he said again.

Dela looked at Lance suddenly. She was frivolous at times, our lady, but she was not stupid; and she surely knew Lance better than she knew any of us. A frown came over her face and I knew what did it, that meek softness in Lance, that quiet, quiet voice.

There was a little silence in the party, over the taped music, in which Gawain’s letting a knife slip against his plate rang devastatingly loud.

“We can’t let it get us down,” Griffin said. “We’re here, that’s all; and there’s no getting out again; and we’re going to live for years.”

“Years and years,” Dela said, winding her fingers with his. “All of us.” She looked on us. “We’re—very glad not to be quite alone. You understand that, all of you? I’m very glad to be able to trust my staff. However long we stay here—there’s no law here; we’ve talked about that, Griffin and I: there’s no law-—no fortieth year. Even if we reach it here. You understand me? We’re together in this.”

It took a moment, this declaration. It hit my stomach like a fist even when I felt happy about it. A shift like that in the whole expected outcome of my life—it was a change as bizarre as dropping through the hole in space, and demanded its own sensory adjustments. Not to be put down. To live to be old.
Old
was not a territory I had mapped out for myself. I looked at Lance, who looked somewhat as dazed as I, and at the others—at Vivien, who had wanted this for herself and thought she was exclusive in her privilege; at Modred, whose face never yet showed any great excitement, only a flickering about the eyes; at Gawain and Lynette and Percy, who looked back at me in shock.

Of course, I thought, of course my lady needed us. It was insanity for them to put any of us down. They’d be alone then. It made sense.

“Thank you,” I said, finding my voice first, and the others murmured something like. It was an eerie thing to say thank you for. Dela smiled benevolently and lifted her glass at us. She was, I think, a little drunk; and so perhaps was Griffin, who had started on the wine when Dela had. Both their faces were flushed. They drank, and we did, to living.

And something hit the ship.

Not hard. It was a tap that rang through the hull and stopped us all, like the stroke of midnight in one of Dela’s stories, that froze us where we sat, enchantment ended.

And it came again. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap.

“O my God,” Dela said.

W
e ran to the bridge, all of us in a rush, Gawain and Percy first, being nearest the door, and the rest of us on their heels, out of breath and frightened out of our minds. The hammering kept up. Gawain and Lynn slid in at controls, Percy and Modred took their places down the boards, and the rest of us—the rest of us just hovered there holding on to each other and looking at the screens, which showed nothing different that I could tell.

Modred started doing something at his board, and com came on very loud, distantly echoing the tapping.

“What are you doing?” Dela asked sharply.

“Listening,” Lynette said as the sounds shifted. Other pickups were coming into play. “Trying to figure out just where they are on the hull.”

Dela nodded, giving belated permission, and we all stayed very quiet while Modred kept sorting through the various pickups through the ship.

It got loud of a sudden, and very loud. I flinched and tried not to. It went quiet of a sudden, then loud again, and my lady Dela swore at Modred.

“Somewhere forward,” Modred said with a calm reach that did something to lower the sound. “About where we touch the mass.”

“Trying to break through,” Gawain muttered, “possibly.”

“Wayne,” Percivale said abruptly, urgently. “I’m getting a pulse on com; same pattern. Response?”

“No!”
Dela cried, before ever Gawain could say anything. “
No
, you don’t answer it.”

“Lady Dela, they may breach us.”

“They. They. We don’t know what it is.”

“He’s right,” Griffin said. “That
they
out there counts, Dela; and they’re trying a contact. If they don’t know we’re alive in here, they could breach that hull and kill us all—at the least, damage the ship, section by section. And then what do we do?—That area forward,” he said to the crew. “Put the emergency seals onto it.”

“Presently engaged,” Lynn said.

“Don’t you give orders,” Dela snapped. “Don’t you interfere with my crew.”

Griffin no more than frowned, but he was doing that already. My lady pushed away from his arm, crossed the deck to stand behind Gawain and Lynn. “Are there arms aboard?” Griffin asked.

“Tapes never prepared your crew for this. How much do you expect of them? Are there weapons aboard? Have they got a block against using them?”

Dela looked about at him, wild. She seemed then to go smaller, as if it were all coming at her too fast. I had never imagined a born-man blanking, but Dela looked close to it. “There aren’t any weapons,” she said.

The hammering stopped, a dire and thickish silence.

“Are we still getting that signal?” Griffin asked.

“Yes,” Percy said after a moment, answering Griffin. It made me shiver, this yes-no of our lady’s, standing there, looking like she wanted to forbid, and not. Percy brought the sound from the com up so we could hear it, and it was a timed pulse of static. One. One-two. One-two-three.

“Maybe—” Dela found her voice. “Maybe it’s something natural.”

“In this place?” Griffin asked. “I think we’d better answer that call. Make it clear we’re in here.—Dela, they know, they
know
this ship’s inhabited if it’s whole: what
are
ships but inhabited? And the question isn’t whether they breach that hull; it’s how they do it. Silence could be taken for unfriendly intentions. Or for our being dead already, and then they might not be careful at all.”

Dela just stared. The static pulses kept on. I held to Lance’s arm and felt him shivering too.

“Answer it,” Griffin said to Percivale.

“No,” Dela said, and Griffin stared at her, frowning, until she made a spidery, resigning motion of her hand.

“Go on,” Griffin said to Percivale. “Can you fine it down, get something clearer out of that?”

The whole crew looked round at their places, in Dela’s silence. And finally she nodded and shrugged and looked away, an I-don’t-care. But she did care, desperately; and I felt sick inside.

“Get to it,” Griffin snapped at them. “Before we lose it.”

Backs turned. Percy and Modred worked steadily for a few moments, and we started getting a clear tone.

“Answer,” Griffin said again, and this time Percy looked around at Dela, and Modred did, slowly and refusing to be hurried.

“Do whatever he says,” Dela murmured, her arms wrapped about her as if she were shivering herself. She rolled her eyes up at the screens, but the screens showed us nothing new.

And all of a sudden the com that had been giving out steady tones snapped and sputtered with static. It started gabbling and clicking, not a static kind of click, but a ticking that started in the bass register like boulders rolling together and rumbled up into higher tones until it became a shriek. We all jerked from the last notes, put our hands over our ears: it was that kind of sound. And it rumbled back down again—softer—someone had gotten the volume adjusted—and kept rumbling, slow, slow ticks.